Context
Caryl Churchill is a British playwright known for dramatising the abuses of power, for her use of non-naturalistic techniques, and for her exploration of sexual politics and feminist themes. She was born in London, on the third of September,1938 and grew up in Montreal. She wrote her first play, 'Downstairs', while she was still at university, and it won her an award at the 'Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival'.
In the 1960s and 70s, Churchill wrote radio dramas and television plays for British television. In 1974, Churchill wrote the play 'Objections to Sex and Violence', and while it was not well reviewed, it led to her association with Monstrous Regiment, a feminist group.
Other controversial plays Churchill has written are:
Top Girls - a play about women losing their humanity in a male dominated environment
Cloud 9 - a play about sexual politics
Softcops - a play about the government trying to depoliticise illegal acts.
Serious Money - a comedy about excesses in finance. Ice cream - a play about Anglo - American stereotypes.
And we are going to perform her play, 'Love and Information'.
Love and Information is a contemporary play by Caryl Churchill about technology, knowledge and communication. It's an example of Churchill’s non naturalistic techniques as it’s made up of different scenes that don’t seem to be linear, have no stage directions, and have no characters. Love and Information also includes controversial topics such as feminism and infidelity.
Challenging or liberating?
On the one hand, as actors we could see the play's lack of direction as a challenge, as this forces us to come up with the story and structure ourselves, being given nothing but the lines to be said.
Love and Information is so deprived of structure that we even have to decide how and by whom, each line is said and while I can understand how an actor may see this as a burden, I personally believe that this gives us a kind of space and freedom to shape our performance, that actors rarely receive. As a group we're able to create our own narrative which will inevitably make us more comfortable with, and understanding of, the play.
Caryl always manages to have her pulse
on the moral, social, and political issues
that are current in our society.
She is and has consistently
been throughout her
career, a formal adventurer
in terms of her theatrical language,
so that she’s
constantly challenging not just literally the language
in which theatre is spoken, but
also the context,
the theatricality and the dramatic landscape
in which she works.
In
that sense she is one of the great innovators
of post-war British drama.
- Stephen Daldry, Royal Court Artistic Director
In the 1960s and 70s, Churchill wrote radio dramas and television plays for British television. In 1974, Churchill wrote the play 'Objections to Sex and Violence', and while it was not well reviewed, it led to her association with Monstrous Regiment, a feminist group.
Other controversial plays Churchill has written are:
Top Girls - a play about women losing their humanity in a male dominated environment
Cloud 9 - a play about sexual politics
Softcops - a play about the government trying to depoliticise illegal acts.
Serious Money - a comedy about excesses in finance. Ice cream - a play about Anglo - American stereotypes.
And we are going to perform her play, 'Love and Information'.
Love and Information is a contemporary play by Caryl Churchill about technology, knowledge and communication. It's an example of Churchill’s non naturalistic techniques as it’s made up of different scenes that don’t seem to be linear, have no stage directions, and have no characters. Love and Information also includes controversial topics such as feminism and infidelity.
Challenging or liberating?
On the one hand, as actors we could see the play's lack of direction as a challenge, as this forces us to come up with the story and structure ourselves, being given nothing but the lines to be said.
Love and Information is so deprived of structure that we even have to decide how and by whom, each line is said and while I can understand how an actor may see this as a burden, I personally believe that this gives us a kind of space and freedom to shape our performance, that actors rarely receive. As a group we're able to create our own narrative which will inevitably make us more comfortable with, and understanding of, the play.
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